OUTPUT_FORMAT option [ISQL]

Sets the output format for the data retrieved by the SELECT statement and redirected into a file, or output using the OUTPUT statement.

String. See below for allowed values.

ASCII

The valid output formats are:

ASCII The output is an ASCII format file with one row per line in the file. All values are separated by commas, and strings are enclosed in apostrophes (single quotes). The delimiter and quote strings can be changed using the DELIMITED BY and QUOTE clauses. If ALL is specified in the QUOTE clause, then all values (not just strings) will be quoted.

Three other special sequences are also used. The two characters \n represent a newline character; \\ represents a single backslash character, and the sequence \xDD represents the character with hexadecimal code DD.

DBASEII The output is a dBASE II format file with the column definitions at the top of the file. Note that a maximum of 32 columns can be output. Column names are truncated to 11 characters, and each row of data in each column is truncated to 255 characters.

DBASEIII The output is a dBASE III format file with the column definitions at the top of the file. Note that a maximum of 128 columns can be output. Column names are truncated to 11 characters, and each row of data in each column is truncated to 255 characters.

EXCEL The output is an Excel 2.1 worksheet. The first row of the worksheet contains column labels (or names if there are no labels defined). Subsequent worksheet rows contain the actual table data.

FIXED The output is fixed format, with each column having a fixed width. The width for each column can be specified using the COLUMN WIDTH clause. If this clause is omitted, the width for each column is computed from the data type for the column, and is large enough to hold any value of that data type. No column headings are output in this format.

FOXPRO The output is a FoxPro format file (the FoxPro memo field is different than the dBASE memo field) with the column definitions at the top of the file. Note that a maximum of 128 columns can be output. Column names are truncated to 11 characters, and each row of data in each column is truncated to 255 characters.

LOTUS The output is a Lotus WKS format worksheet. Column names will be put as the first row in the worksheet. Note that there are certain restrictions on the maximum size of Lotus WKS format worksheets that other software (such as Lotus 1-2-3) can load. There is no limit to the size of file Interactive SQL can produce.

SQL The output is an Interactive SQL INPUT statement required to recreate the information in the table.

XML The output is an XML file encoded in UTF-8 and containing an embedded DTD. Binary values are encoded in CDATA blocks with the binary data rendered as 2-hex-digit strings.